In the period between 1912 and 1918 there was another unrelated Palace Theater that was located at 11 East Federal Street that I will be posting and in order to prevent confusion between the two,I will be calling it “The First Palace”.

The Palace Theatre did indeed have a Pipe Organ, and as posted, it was a Wurlitzer Style H Special. A Style H meant that it contained 10 ranks of Pipes. However, the Palace had 11 ranks, thus the “special” designation. The 11th rank was an additional Vox Humana set of pipes that were installed next to the projection booth in its own chamber. When the organ was removed in 1964, I don’t believe that this 1 rank Echo Division was removed.

The organ was scattered across the country. I spent nearly 10 years re-assembling it with either the original components or identical from other Wurlitzer organs.

The organ is installed at C&C Ribbon Company, 8204 South Avenue in Boardman. It is installed and plays daily, either by hand or via a MIDI computer system. For the past 5 years, C&C has an annual Christmas Open House Thanksgiving weekend, usually with a silent movie on Saturday night and 5 mini concerts on Sunday, running from 12-5. Artists have included many national and international performers as well as local organists.

Of course,in the theatre, the instrument was installed on either side of the prosidium arch in 2 chambers with grillwork across the front. In the store, the organ is installed in a single chamber. The facade on the organ is a solid mahogany case featuring a hand carved floral motif and dummy facade pipes. It was carved by 3 French Canadians (their signitures are inside the case). This case was originally built for the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair for the Los Angeles Art Organ Company. It was intended for a self-playing residence instrument whose sale never materialized. At the fair, the facade was sold to the Wirsching Organ Company of Alliance, Ohio. Wirsching used the facade for a new instrument they built for the original Grace Lutheran Church, whose original building still stands (2014) on West Rayen Avenue. I purchased the Wirsching instrument, mainly for the facade for use on the Wurlitzer.

If you get a chance, stop in at C&C and hear the organ. It will take you back in time. If you have any additional questions, about this or any other Youngstown Pipe Organ, feel free to email me!

The grand opening of the Keith-Albee/Palace Theater was a big deal for Youngstowners that would only be matched with the grand opening of the Warner Theater. While there was an afternoon performance that day, the big event took place at the evening performance when a sell out crowd dressed in their finest, filled the theater,.

But lets just leave it at that and read the Vindicator report of the event:

I remember seeing many great movies and “stage shows” at the Palace, back in the 1940’s & 1950’s. That was the big-band era, and many of them played the Palace, where I seen many of them. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, Charley Spevak, etc.,
etc. And in later years, about 1958 to early 1960’s there was a group of us who hung-out at Rodney-Ann’s, sandwich & coffee shop. We, for the most part, attended the local college (YU/YSU)and some of us had night classes. Rodney Ann’s had great sandwiches, coffee, and ice-cream. Rodney-Ann’s was located to the left of the Palace Theatre (as you entered the theatre), and there were the large glass doors where you could exit from the Palace into Rodney-Ann’s, but not the reverse. The Palace was a very beautifull theatre, with a majestic lobby, and a series of really fine balaconies on the upper levels. To most locals, at that time, they mourned it’s destruction. And it appears that the downtown Youngstown never did recover. And so it was!!

The way I do it is when there is something I want to save at GoogleNews, I get it as large as I can, then click on print screen, then open up Paint click on Edit and then paste. The whole screen shows, and I save the file to a folder with an unique file name. I then go to my photo editor to crop out what I need, enlarge it and save the final product. It really doesn’t take very long to do … a couple of minutes at best.

Thanks! For some reason the print screen on my dumb keyboard does not do anything – can’t even do what you do. I will find them on google (although it drives me crazy) and send link to husband at work.

I tried to blow the ads up to a larger size but unfortunately they became unreadable. The process I use is to get what I want as large as possable on the screen and then print screen, copying it to Paint to save, and then edit it with a photo editor, Google News doesn’t permit saving so I have to use this roundabout method. The ads appeared in the March 22, and 24 edition of the Youngstown Vindicator on the theater page.

wolfgirl500 ~ WOW you are awesome, can’t thank you enough for these! (Could you post the first one a bit bigger? Hope it is okay to ask that!) Any idea of how I can get an ad for the week before when they were at the Orpheum in Akron? I am creating a scrapbook for all of the Great Grandchildren. Thanks again!

Barry Manalow played here recently using members of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra as backup and commented that the sold out audience was fantastic and that he’d come back any time.

We’ve become so accustom to having top shelf performers come here that we’ve been spoiled silly.

I’ve been to movies that got rave reviews at the local first run houses here that were total flops attendence wise and to others where the SRO sign was set up by the box office that got poor reviews so go figure.

@ wolfgirl, It was funny to read your comments about Youngstown audiences being a tough crowd, because I have said the same thing for years. My band started playing at the Cedars Lounge, on North Hazel St. in 1983 when I was still in high school. We played for years there to develop a following. We really had to work at it. The first time we headlined a show at a club in New York City, we were an immediate smash hit and nobody there really even knew us. I remember thinking, “Gee, that was easy, not like playing Youngstown.”

Hi, My mother talked about the Palace Theater many times. When she moved to Youngstown from Coraopolis, Pa in the late 40’s, she and a friend worked next door at Friedmans. It was a deli/lunch counter and also a candy shop. Mom said they would sneek into see shows because there was a side door that was always unlocked. She talked about all the big shows and big bands that they got to watch. I wish she was alive so I could show her the wonderful pictures of the theater. I almost thought that was her in the one picture standing alone and the movie banner reads The More the Merrier. But that was made before she moved to Youngstown. Is it possible that Friedmans is to the right of the marque? Thank you for all your hard work with this website.